Who's a Phony?

Burly, two-fisted, plain-spoken Carroll Duard Alcott, 42, started it. Before he joined Cincinnati's WLW at Pearl Harbor time, Alcott was renowned throughout the Far East for his spade-calling broadcasts from Shanghai. Almost every time he opened his mouth Tokyo clenched its little fists.

To protect himself against assault, he acquired a bodyguard, wore a bulletproof vest and an automatic. He got out just in time. He is somewhat touchy about the Pacific war, thinks that the U.S. is doing far too little in that theater, and has said so.

Short, bald, mild Gregor Athalwin Ziemer, 43, favors another war theater. For eleven years he was headmaster of the American School (for U.S. children) in Berlin. His experiences moved him to write Education for Death, a ghastly, vivid account of Nazi education, which became the movie Hitler's Children (TIME, Jan. 18). He joined station WLW shortly before Alcott did.

One night last week Carroll Alcott closed his newscast with the remark: "And now you can listen to Gregor Ziemer, the commentator who looks at the world through a spyglass and the Encyclopedia Britannica. . . ."

After Ziemer's broadcast the pair met in WLW's handsome new studio building and, according to Alcott (Ziemer wouldn't talk), the following dialogue occurred:

Ziemer: "What do you mean by those remarks?"

Alcott: "Just what I said. You're a phony."

Ziemer: "You're a phony, too."

Alcott: "No man can call me that and live."

No one saw the first blow struck. Ziemer swears he did nothing but fend off his assailant. Alcott says: "I took him." A studio guard intervened, ordered Alcott outside and locked the door. Through the door Ziemer understood Alcott to say: "You're a German spy." "That wasn't what I said at all," said Alcott. "I said that sometimes he sounded like a Nazi."

Next day Alcott was no longer working for WLW. (". . . Regrettable . . . highly emotional state of mind. . . .") He went east to see about his forthcoming book, My War With Japan. Ziemer posed for photographers, said he had bruised his hand trying to save himself from hitting the floor after the fracas.

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